Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on January 4, 2009 – 4:41 pm
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing Twitter means business written by Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Outliers written by Malcolm Gladwell and Myspace Marketing written by Sean Percival.
twitter means business: how microblogging can help or hurt your company
I covered a book on Twitter last month and after seeing an excellent slideshare presentation on Twitter for Business (not related to this author) I was keen on reading Twitter means business: how microblogging can help or hurt your company written by Julio Ojeda-Zapata (website). First thing I noticed that the book not only covers the glory and success of Twitter, it also explains how it could hurt your business. I really like this down-to-earth view on the topic. The book itself is an explanation of Twitter and elaborates through “Twitter lessons” how and why you should use Twitter for business. With this focus it clearly distinguishes itself from other books dedicated to the phenomenon. Much of the book is focused on specific cases like Dell, Comcast and Zappos and more general organizations using strategies like listening, speaking, engaging and evolving on Twitter. Two funny things about this book: for one the author itself was one of the best examples. Second the author respects Twitter language in his book by addressing both real names as well as Twitter usernames.
Outliers: The story of success
I don’t know how I could have missed the new book of Malcolm Gladwell last month… Outliers became an instant best-seller after its launch hitting Amazon’s Best of the Month in November 2008. Outliers: the story of success tries to answer the question why some become extremely succesfull, deserved or not, and others don’t. Gladwell argues that outliers rise on a “tide of advantages” like ethnic background, when and where you were born and other factors together with some luck to become truly successful. In his book, he talks about things as the 10.000 hour rule, Harlan Kentucky, and Rice paddies and math tests. As we are used from Gladwell, not (entirely) scientific but well researched and full of interesting and fun trivia make it a nice read.
MySpace Marketing: Creating a Social Network to Boom Your Business
After a book on Marketing on Facebook was launched in September 2008, Sean Percival is now publishing a book on Myspace Marketing: Creating a Social Network to Boom Your Business in Q1 2009. Not the first of it’s kind, but the contents of the book as well as the topic itself is absolutely relevant for organizations. With for instance 6mln+ members on Dutch social network Hyves, these social networks are a marketers heaven and the question how to effectively market those target audiences is more relevant (as well as more difficult) then ever. The book itself covers all the basics you would expect in a book on marketing: from an introduction to Myspace and an assessment whether your business is right for Myspace to a practical, step-by-step guide on how to market on Myspace. With inspiring mini case studies, the book shows you the tactics that work. However, the accompanying Ning Network could use some work though…
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Written on December 15, 2008 – 8:40 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing Advertising 2.0 written by Tracy Tuten, Twitter Revolution written by Warren Whitlock and Managing Online Forums written by Patrick O’Keefe.
Advertising 2.0: Social Media Marketing in a Web 2.0 World
Books on Web 2.0, Social Media, the Live Web or whatever you may call it are released on a near daily basis. I’ve read many of them and really get the feeling I get the hang of it. It feels like I’ve read it all before… So I am done with the books who describe the übertrends and explain what is happining. I’m in search of books who explain me how to take benefit of everything 2.0. Books who show me the money! With unexpected cases, a niche subject and clear guidelines on how to approach the topic. I’ve found much of this in Advertising 2.0: social media marketing in a Web 2.0 world, written by Associate Prosser at Longwood University Tracy Tuten. Next to the more well known cases, you’ll will also find cases on Nine Inch Nails, Audi, 42 Entertainment, Vodaphone and Leo Burnett. In advertising 2.0 Tuten describes the advertising, branding, and marketing opportunities available so that advertisers and content publishers can take benefit of the Web 2.0 world.
Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online
A book with Twitter in it’s title. Gotta read that! I wonder if there has ever been a (online) phenomenon that got so much traction as Twitter got in the last two years with all its press coverage, third party applications and wide spread adoption (if so please help me :-)). Author Warren Whitlock must have thought the same when he decided to write Twitter Revolution: How social media and mobile marketing is changing the way we do business & market online. A book on how YOU can take benefit of the fastest growing social networking revolution in years. So if you ever need a book to get the hang of Twitter and it’s spin-offs, understand their value, get the most out of the services or convince your superiors why you should have a Twitter like service within your enterprise? Read Twitter Revolution.
Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards
I’ve been working on some smaller and larger scale online communities lately and one of the things I had trouble with explaining to my customers is online community management. I know it’s essential in developing successful online communities and the cases of organizations applying online community management are countless. But what do you do exactly? What types of people do you need, what are their tasks, how do you deal with Legal constraints, trolls, technical issues and the like? I’ve found much of the answers in Managing Online Forums: everything you need to know to create and run succesful community discussion boards written by (amazingly) 23 year old Patrick O’Keefe. O’Keefe describes all aspects of online community management from setting up the right organizational structure, promoting and attracting members, choosing and managing moderators to generating revenue. I believe Managing online forums is a must read for everyone who is slightly involved in setting up successful social sites.
Written on November 11, 2008 – 8:08 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing the Future of Reputation written by Danial J. Solve, Secrets of Social Media Marketing written by Paul Gillin and Click written by Bill Tancer.
The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
Lots and lots is being written nowadays on all the positive things that are happening on the social web. Most of those books are descriptive: they describe the phenomena, throw in some cases and some best practices and that’s it. Few on the other hand, try to get to the (sometimes negative) bottom of a specific phenomenon. The future of reputation, written by Daniel J. Solve, is such a book. Solve is professor of Law at the George Washington University and has written extensively about reputation and privacy in the past. In the future of reputation, Solve thoroughly writes about the trail of information about our lives that is instantly available online and the implications of this on our personal lives. How it affects our being and how we are perceived in the information age. Well thought and well written. If you don’t want to buy the book you can always read the entire text online.
Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business!
I’ve read “Join the Conversation” and “Marketing to the Social Web” before, which I think are both very insightful and entertaining books on marketing in the age of the social web. No wonder I got excited by Paul Gillin’s latest work Secrets of social media marketing. Known from it’s best seller “The new Influencers“, Gillin has now written a true handbook on social media marketing. The appraisals name Paul Gillin as one of the few who truly understand marketing to the social web. As you would expect, the book is chock-full of information, new cases and best practices. As The Future of Reputation, much of Secrets of Social Media Marketing can be read online so you can find out yourself whether you should by this book as well.
Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters
Bill Tancer is the leader of global research at Hitwise, so he should know a bunch about our online behaviour don’t you think? Well it seems he does and he wrote it all down in Click: What Millions of People are doing online and why it matters. Click gives a sneak peek into the works at Hitwise, a research firm with sample populations in the ten’s of millions of people. Clicks gives insights in what we search for, some cool online analysis, and what our online behaviour tells us about ourselves. One cool finding I got from Bill Tancer’s website is the following: “The combination of charting search and social network traffic to music artists’ sites provides a visual depiction of Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point.” Entertaining, but not much more to expect.
Written on October 13, 2008 – 10:28 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing planet Google written by Randall Stross, Born Digital written by John palfrey and Urs Gasser and Click here to order written by Joel Comm.
Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan To Organize Everything We Know
We live in difficult times. The financial crisis seems to kill every innovative concept, Techcrunch declares Web 2.0 dead and Sequoia says RIP to good times… Fortunately, there is Google who helps us to make sense of all the information that is floating around us and who is constantly evolving to offer us more services to organize our information needs. Now New York Times columnist Randall Stross wrote down the entire Google story in Planet Google - One Company’s audacious plan to organize everything we know: from it’s initial launch, its struggles to come up with a viable business model and its recent attempts to take over the Office Suite market. Planet Google is a simple, pragmatic but well written insight in Googleplex. Unfortunately the book does not offer too much depth like the implications of a world of ‘perfect knowledge‘ in which Google introduced us. But I guess we will leave that to another book.
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
Much is written about generation Y, generation Einstein (in Dutch) and the impact of growing up in a digital world but few wrote it down so well as John Palfrey and Urs Gasser did in Born Digital - Understanding the first generation of digital natives. Born Digital is the result of a digital natives research project and describes the issues surrounding digital natives and their extensive use of digital resources, the Internet and social networks. It deals with issues around privacy, safety, learning, intellectual property and media creation. This is not a technology oriented book. Rather it approaches the topic from a sociologic perspective which makes it, in my perspective, rather interesting. It seems that the book mainly focuses on parents, adults and policy makers who are trying to understand the implications of what is going on but it’s also an interesting read for the more technology savvy people.
Click Here to Order: Stories of the World’s Most Successful Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs
I love Joel Comm’s tagline on his website: Make Money online. In the end that’s what it all comes down to right? Now Comm published a book that should help you achieving just that by giving you a sneak peek in the world of the world’s most successful internet marketing entrepreneurs. The book is packed with inspiring and fast-paced stories on real success stories and gives you some usefull insights and tactics on how to achieve the same results with your own initiatives. Click here to order is entertaining, a nice read!
Written on August 14, 2008 – 10:36 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. It’s obviously ‘komkommertijd’ as it seems that not much relevant reading material reaches us these months (please correct me if I’m wrong in the comments). Therefore, we discuss one new release, one upcoming release and an oldy in a new jacket. This month we’re discussing Tribes by Seth Godin, Blown to Bits by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen and Harry Lewis and The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.
Tribes: We Need You
The fact that I’m covering a book that is set to be published in October says it all… Can I consider myself part of the Seth Godin tribe? I think probably not, but this line seems to cover his entire book. According to Seth Godin Tribes are “groups of people aligned around an idea, connected to a leader and to each other. Tribes make our world work, and always have.” Think Apple, Nelson Mandela, God. Probably Godin’s next bestseller and not to be missed…
Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion
Blown to Bits (not to be confused with Blown to bits), written by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen and Harry Lewis, is a book in line with the Future of the Internet. The book seeks answers to questions the information age draws upon us and claims to give us the knowledge we need to help shape our own digital future. All written from an MIT / Harvard perspective. The book not only describes 10 truths about digital data it also describes the implications of choices our governments are making right now. The book got some outstanding appraisal from among others Lawrence Lessig and David Weinberger.
The Long Tail, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
The Long Tail, written by Chris Anderson is probably one of the most popular books of our culture. Despite some recent critique on the Long Tail and an extensive wikipedia entry that does a great job in investigating it’s relevance and statistical meaning, the book still holds a lot of value. The book describes how the digitization has transformed the future of commerce and culture from a hit driven economy, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, into an endlessly long tail economy. His revised and updated edition adds a new chapter about Long Tail Marketing and a new epilogue, which makes it even more worthwhile to read. A must own for the true fans.
Written on July 16, 2008 – 2:09 pm
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing Once you’re lucky, twice you’re good by Sarah Lazy, The future of the internet and how to stop it by Jonathan Zittrain, and iPhone: the missing manual by David Pogue,
Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0
Every once in a while a book is released that describes the history of “our” industry: the rise, the fall and again the rise of the web economy. Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good, written by Sarah lazy, is such a book. Lazy describes the burst of the first dot com bubble in 2000 and the resurrection of the industry by telling the stories of the entrepreneurs who invented the web companies that bring us Web 2.0 today. Expect stories from Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Digg, Six Apart, Slide, LinkedIn, Twitter, Ning, and more.
The book has the same vibe as the best sellers describing the Apple and Steve Jobs success stories so it’s definitely worth a read.
The Future of the Internet and how to stop it
I’ve watched some parts of the (not so short) presentation about The Future of the Internet and how to stop it, written by Jonathan Zittrain, thanks to Dutch marketing expert Marco Derksen and it looks quite amazing. Zittrain’s point is that the success off the Internet as we know it is bound to come to end due to the exact same characteristics (open innovation) that made it a success in the first place. We are moving towards a lock down of the Internet through proprietary platforms like iPods, iPhones, X-Box’s, GPS and more. To quote from it’s website “[The Future of the Internet] shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true “netizens.” This book is worth your time when you’re interested in a vision on future developments of the Internet.
iPhone: The Missing Manual
Now we can all enjoy the benefits of having a brand new shiny iPhone the first thing we need to do is find ways to get the most out of this little machine, cause we need to justify our investment (ahum…). iPhone: the missing manual, written by David Pogue will get you quickly up to speed on how you get the most out of the hardware, software and interface of the iPhone. Together with Andy Ihnatko’s iPhone Fully loaded you are bound to become a true iPhone hero in no time. Nothing much more to say here…
Written on June 8, 2008 – 8:00 pm
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing Groundswell by Charlene Li, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide by Amy Shuen, and Designing for the Social Web by Joshua Porter.
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
It’s a great time for people who want to read social media and web strategy in general. Many books are released each month and to find the books that are worth your time gets harder and harder. Groundswell, a book written by Forrester Analist Charlene Li, seems to be such a book. As we know from Forrester, the book is full of hard analytic data to back up your social media strategy building thingy. The book provides many case studies (also ones we haven’t heard of yet), strategy roadmap development and a profile tool to map your (potential) customers with three general criteria on six overlapping levels of participation to find how to best interact with them.
Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations.
Let’s face it: while we all can’t stop raving about the beauty of social media and Web 2.0, we are still not very good in monetizing this trend other than by selling ads or making a smashing IPO. Web 2.0: A strategy Guide, written by Amy Shuen (she’s publishing parts of her book on her weblog), tries to help us with this part by talking about Web 2.0 from a strategy perspective, the major Web 2.0 concepts and it’s effects (not technologies) and real life cases as Flickr, Google and Amazon. This book tries to bridge the gap between the yet relatively limited knowledge of business people on Web 2.0 so perhaps it’s not a book for early adopters as we might all be. But when you are in business, looking for a strategy book on Web 2.0 this might be the one you are looking for.
Designing for the Social Web
I’ve read an interesting review of Designing for the Social Web, written by Joshua Porter, on the blog of Web Worker Daily. They put it nicely: this book is about designing social sites from a higher level view of the process, which makes it more relevant than perhaps yet another book about building rails applications. We all know that the social web requires a different perspective on principles like designing for conversations for example and Porter outlines this nicely in this book. He talks about the usage lifecycle, users intrinsic motivations for participating on your site, getting users on your site, analytics and more. Definitely a must read for all social designers among us.
Written on May 30, 2008 – 12:11 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Despite the occasional fuzz about Twitter, or Web 2.0 in general, lacking the ability to go mainstream, there are significant signs that Enterprise 2.0 in general is getting the attention of the enterprise more and more. Although many might argue that Enterprise 2.0 already is on the agenda of the manager, I would argue that this is still limited to a few enterprise early adopters or early followers. But as I said, this is changing slowly, which is a good sign for all of us. But we need to stay focused, as we might lose the connection with the important followers.
Ross Mayfield and beer
About three weeks ago I visited a Dutch conference on Enterprise 2.0. This conference focused solely on end users of Enterprise 2.0 related tools and concepts, and was free of charge for these end users. Free of charge, in my opinion, resulted in an entirely different crowd than say the visitors of The Next Web Conference where mainly early adopters spend a fee to network and see their Web 2.0 heroes in action. So we ended up with a crowd that had relatively fresh interest in Enterprise 2.0, but limited knowledge and could in no way be compared to a crowd of early adopters.
What struck me again during the conference is that there is an enormous crowd that is just discovering the possibilities of Enterprise 2.0 related concepts. At this point, many of these participants know not much more about Enterprise 2.0 than “the application of some tools like wikis as knowledge management initiatives” (despite the fact that there is an entire different world behind this). At the same time, there is still skepticism about the ROI and applicability of Enterprise 2.0. I sometimes think that it’s a crowd that we as early adopters seem to lose sight of too often. In this sense, spending too much time with the ‘in crowd’ who ‘get’ Enterprise 2.0 can result in serious over-enthusiasm and ‘lack of realism’.
As a relatively early adopter, despite the interesting line-up including Ross Mayfield and Andrew McAfee, I didn’t hear much news at the conference. At first I felt disappointed about this, but after I realized the aforementioned point about over-enthusiasm, it hit me that we might have to focus for a while on getting the followers up to speed before we move on to the next web 3.0, or whatever version number we want to associate with what comes next. Otherwise we all might lose an important shot at truly socializing the Enterprise…
Written on May 12, 2008 – 11:47 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing Me the Media by Jaap Bloem, Menno van Doorn and Sander Duivestein, Google Apps Hacks by Philipp Lenssen and Microsoft 2.0 by Mary Jo Foley.
Me the Media - Past, Present and Future of the Third Media Revolution
Only once in a while a book is released in the Netherlands that has international potential. I think Me the Media, written by Jaap Bloem, Menno van Doorn and Sander Duivestein is such a book. Currently only available in Dutch but the book is being translated to English so put it on your watch list! Me the Media deals with the impact of web media on “hyper-individualization, ICTainment on top of ICTechnology, and of meaningful web conversations between organizations, customers and employees”.
The authors knows how to eat their own dogfood, since they launched a website, a weblog, a wiki and an exciting video channel on youtube about their book. Definitely worth a watch! Oh and if you are curious about the book itself? Feel free to read the outlines of the chapters online. for Dutch readers, entire chapters are available as PDF download.
Google Apps Hacks
It’s no surprise that Google seems to be seriously hammering Microsoft and it’s office suite by offering a less complex, less expensive and easier to use (my opinion :)) office platform. Even I use Google Docs and spreadsheets more and more with my colleagues although my employee provides me with a well-thought, ubiquitous Microsoft platform. Google Apps Hacks, written by Philipp Lenssen (famous guy behind Google Blogoscoped!), describes a whole bunch of clever hacks, workarounds, and other undocumented tips that help you get the most out of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Presentations, and other Google applications. After you read this book you will see how big the Google Universe really is.
Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era
Google Apps Hacks describes how you can benefit from the entire Google suite and makes you wonder how Microsoft will deal with these kinds of competition. At the same time we all know that Microsoft is working his ass off to stay relevant in the post-desktop, Internet era. Personally I’m extremely curious about how Microsoft will evolve the coming years since they have the appearances against them (Microsoft Bashing anyone?). So Microsoft 2.0, written by Mary Jo Foley (an American journalist, blogger for Zdnet and Microsoft analyst), is a great way to get a sneak peek into Microsoft’s future. For this book Foley interviewed many executives, partners, customers and competitors so she was able to write down a comprehensive picture of the company’s future. Foley offers insights into the people, products and strategies that will be key for the Microsoft in the next decade(s).
Written on April 16, 2008 – 8:00 am
Martin Kloos, Web Strategy Consultant
Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing Mobile Advertising by Chetan Sharma, Wikipatterns by Stewart Mader, and Programming Amazon Web Services by James Murty.
Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market
If we only had to identify one trend people on the Next Web 2008 were talking about the most it was probably about the oppertunities of the mobile (social networking) market. So if you want to take full advantage of this rising market, “Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market” written by Chetan Sharma is the book for you to read. What’s interesting is that this book not only describes the history of the mobile market and the enormous opportunity the mobile market offers, it also provides a blueprint for you to exploit this opportunity. Want to take a sneak peek into the first parts of the book? You can find the preface and first chapter of the book on the website MobileAdvertisingBook.com.
“If you believe the future is wireless, then this book is a guide to that future. Simple, fact-filled, and astute.” -Om Malik, GigaOM
Wikipatterns
As a business consultant, I’m always looking for ways to improve my skills on making use of the new tools and concepts the so-called Enterprise 2.0 wave has to offer us. And I guess I found in Wikipatterns, written by Stewart Mader, a handy guide to help people make the most out of Wiki software, or collaboration tools in general. What particularly appealed to me was the practical approach of the book. It offers many useful tips on implementing wikis, from a simple pilot to large scale adoption. It also describes many interesting case studies of wiki adoption in various enterprises. Written near the end of 2007, but still relevant today. Not for techies, but for the end users who are planning (or working on) wiki adoption within their organization.
Programming Amazon Web Services: S3, EC2, SQS, FPS, and SimpleDB
I’m not a programmer, but one thing I realized during The Next Web Conference is that íf you are planning to built a global start-up, you should built it on cloud-computing technology. Or do you really really want to waste your venture capitalist’s money?* It looks like Amazon has just the right platform for you to do so (or perhaps you are planing on building on Google App Engine). Programming Amazon Web Services written by James Murty seems to be just about right to get you started with building your small to medium-sized platform on Amazon’s AWS. Nothing more, nothing less but invaluable if you want to realize a scalable platform that pleases our VC’s.
* anyone counted how much this phrase was used during the conference :-)
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
